Global Dickens?

One of the schools that I interviewed for at MLA this past January has a “Global Shakespeare” course in its catalog. This was promising, I thought, since my work conceives of Victorian Studies as something that should be global in scope, if only to acknowledge that what made the Victorians who they were was their vast-reaching empire. Maybe this school would like a “Global Victorianist?” I thought to myself. No, no they would not, it seems.

In other news, as the Dickens’s World online conference put on by Wiley-Blackwell this week (3/7/12 and 3/8/12, though in some other time zone) goes on, I am currently thrilling to the themes in John Jordan’s essay “Global Dickens.” My first reaction was to fantasize about the course I could teach by the same name. Or better suited, “Postcolonial Dickens!” But such gut reactions are best quelled in this job market. Instead, I buckle down to consider in what ways it would be possible to conceive of Dickens globally and what kind of horizon such a configuration must have.

The article praises Professor Ada Nisbet for conceiving of Dickens as an artist whose work has achieved global significance and circulation. Jordan’s essay describes Nesbit’s ambitious project to create an international bibliography of Dickens Studies. The project, essentially a global reception study heartily limited by language, seems to have had a positively Casaubonian scope to it. Nesbit never finished it. Jordan accuses the postal system of slowly stifling the project and understates the point: Nesbit lacked adequate technology to complete the project.

My own concern, given my scholarly background, is Dickens in India. For sure, recording the reception of Dickens in India alone would have driven any scholar mad: Jordan writes, "The essay on 'Dickens in India' was especially anomalous, since it would have contained references to some 14 different languages spoken within the Indian subcontinent, including English." Oh right, that national language problem (just imagine the voting ballots). Also listed as an obstacle to the completion of the project: “appropriate contributors were difficult to find. India proved especially challenging, and Professor Nisbet was obliged to locate new researchers there as one prospective contributor after another declined or withdrew from the project.” One wonders what is meant by an “appropriate” contributor? Literary criticism looks very different in India than in North America; in my reading experience, what passes for literary criticism in India is far more erudite and historical (literary historical and biographical in flavor), far less theoretical or formalist (formalism having always already been limited by its European contours). Jordan does give a proper shout out to Priya Joshi’s archival work, but then I wonder, when will we finally stop pointing to Joshi’s work as exemplary because it’s finally been extended by other scholars?

I think the moral of this story, though Jordan does not overtly call for it, is to digitize this project, “Global Dickens.” Something like RaVoN.

In conclusion, this line from Jordan’s essay made me chuckle: “A Dickens Fellowship supposedly exists in Poona, although little evidence of its presence can be found.” Maybe Poona is where my tenure-track job is, too.

With Regard to My Insomnia

I have a nice long teaching-reflectiony post percolating on my laptop, all about how rewarding it is to be teaching a literature course in my specialization this term, my successful Orientalism lecture, my thoughtful students dialoguing thought-provoking things on the online discussion board. But then some colleagues drew my attention to recent articles and blog posts on the topic of adjunct, contingent faculty. Michael Bérubé's "Among the Majority." Copy & Paste's Crowdsourcing Google doc. An infographic from Online PhD that makes things all too clear.

My kid wakes me up in the middle of the night to nurse. Yes, I'm still doing that. But after she nods back off to sleep, I'm usually awake for 2-4 hours considering the facts. I finished my PhD in 2007, and I've done MLA five years in a row now. 12 (or is it 16?) interviews, 3 campus visits, no tenure-track job. My scholarship has gotten to be an increasingly expensive hobby: I still attend conferences 2-3 times a year, each of which might cost me $500 to $1,000 in travel, hotel, registration, and meals. I spend uncompensated time writing articles, book reviews, and working on my book project when I could be working a paid job. (My family has been scratching their heads about this for years.) This is all fine--I love my research like I love my daughter. But now teaching, too, is beginning to seem like a very expensive hobby. Next term, I've got one contract for one 3-credit course for which I'll make about $2100 over three months. That might cover my half of daycare, but it certainly doesn't cover rent and other bills.

That's all. I just wanted a place to dump this information for the next late night session of not-sleeping.

CFP: Victorian Transnationalism

This is exciting. VISAWUS is doing a conference theme of Victorian Transnationalism this fall at SUNY Plattsburgh. What the advertisement on The Hoarding does not reveal is that Amanda Claybaugh, Professor of English at Harvard University, is to be the keynote speaker! (I confess that it was I who suggested to the Board when we met last fall that we invite Dr. Claybaugh. I really enjoyed her monograph The Novel of Purpose: Literature and Social Reform in the Anglo-American World. My only complaint is that her scope was limited to literary/reformist relations between Britain and America. I think some targets of social reform, such as marriage, were global concerns, not just shared across the Atlantic, and some day I will substantiate this claim with a shiny new book publication.)

*edit: I just found my very long review of The Novel of Purpose on Amazon.com. I'd forgotten I'd done that. How silly. I wonder if anyone has ever read it all the way through?

Fall Quarter 2010 Recap

In the Fall, I took a few risks with my course design. I think I was reacting to the fact that for the past two years I've been teaching writing courses that were linked to large lecture courses. I had no control over the materials that my students were encountering in their lecture courses; my role was to teach context-specific writing. Although that is also a pleasant and rewarding gig, I was itching to develop my own course again, so when the English Department at local R1 University hired me to teach both an Introductory and an Intermediate writing course, I went to town.

For the Introductory course, I had students analyze Matthew Arnold's essay "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time." I asked them to assess whether Arnold's standards for cultural critique still apply to cultural production today. Then I assigned them George Eliot's essay "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists." Students wrote rhetorical analyses to evaluate the success of Eliot's arguments. Collectively, student papers articulated the continuing relevancy of Victorian prose and ideas. Memorably, one student compared silly lady novelists to the women on Jersey Shore (as in, hopefully they are not representative of women's intellectual capacities today). Another student argued that Arnold's conceptualization of the elitist role of the cultural critic is no longer relevant in this world of mass/rapid digital communications when everyone is a cultural critic via Facebook and Twitter updates and artistic production itself seems wildly accessible.

I entitled the Intermediate writing course "WTF?" ("Why The Fangs" hee hee) The main line of inquiry for the course was, why have vampire tales enjoyed such sustained popularity? We read Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819); Le Fanu's "Carmilla" (1872); Braddon's "Good Lady Ducayne" (1896); and Stoker's Dracula (1897). We watched Coppola's silly cinematic adaptation Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and various episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Limiting myself to these texts was difficult: I wished there was time for some of Meyer's bestselling Twilight books (or the blockbuster films), episodes of True Blood, and that amazing Swedish film from 2010 Let the Right One In (which I have already lovingly reviewed here). I think the most useful thing this course offered students was an intentional variety of writing assignments beginning with short analytical response papers—my opportunity to introduce them to some conventions of academic analysis including claim-evidence patterns and focused, coherent paragraphing. These were followed by a persuasive paper assignment that required students to read and summarize a challenging theoretical article about Dracula ("Textula" by Robert Ready) and then respond to it with an original thesis and bodies of evidence. Following this standard academic discursive practice, we dramatically shifted our approach to the course materials. The second half of the term was devoted to helping students develop and refine their writing voice. Students read what I thought were well-composed film reviews (from the New Yorker, NYT, and The Guardian) as representatives of the genre. We studied these for both their structural and stylistic lessons. (Basically I told students, "Given these examples, what seem to be the conventions of the film review genre?") Having deconstructed the examples, students then wrote film reviews of Coppola’s adaptation of Dracula. These were such fun to read! Lastly, I asked students to write expository essays engaging the central question of the course, Why the Fangs Still? I had them read Joan Acocella's New Yorker essay, and an article by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan in the NYT for sample archives and arguments. Students produced really thoughtful, risk-taking responses to this assignment, again.

I'm not sure how many regular readers of this blog are still with me, since this post lacks baby pictures! I would like to begin using this blog to create some kind of reflective record of my recent courses. This term I teach an Introduction to Reading Literature course that I've titled "Gender and Race in the Literature of the British Empire." First up: Flora Annie Steel’s historical novel On the Face of the Waters.

Ave Moose

Mathilde and I are sitting here in the early morning darkness contemplating the lit Christmas Tree. We are listening to Ave Maria and contentedly gnawing on Mortimer Moose (well, one of us is). It is amazing to think that in January 2011 we nearly lost this baby, and here we are today with a chubby, raspberry-blowing, joy-bundle. What a blessing this creature beside me is.


2011 was full of exciting events: the great anticipation of progeny, nearly nicked by a dynamic cervix and rescued by bedrest and weekly HP17 shots. We moved. We visited my family; my family visited us; D's family from Russia came and lived with us for a while. I taught 5 courses, revised and submitted one article, and delivered two conference papers. I finally read David Copperfield. Beer was brewed. Cakes were baked.

I am up way too early to write a long gratitude post, so let me just claim quiet contentment for now. My kid is getting restless.

Done

Done Grading!
Exhausted.
But celebrating.
Wine.
Packing.
Trip!
Airport.
Early.
Very early in morning.
With baby.
With 7-month-old baby who recently learned to scream as if starring in a horror movie.
...
Wine.
Xmas break.
Cookies!
Anxiety.
MLA looming.
Suit.
SALA paper looming.
Research over holiday break.
ENG 200 prep looming.
Reading for fun is dead.
Wine.

Red-wrapped Things I Currently Love

I've been so busy this term teaching my two writing classes, revising an article, showing up (online) for a faculty development writers' bootcamp, and caring for the mothersucker that I've not had any time to update this blog. SO: here I show you two things near and dear to my hear that both happen to be wrapped in red. It's a cheap occasion for a blog, I admit, but I'm stretched pretty thin right now. (Ha ha. Insert joke about pregnancy weight here; I'm too tired to make one up).

Seriously, you can expect bigger things over the holiday break. (After all, I know my loyal supporters are wondering if I'll be on the MLA Air Diet this year or not ["Is she back on the market? Is she pregnant? Is it a magical double whammy again??"])

First things first. Those crazy Bridgeport brewers in Oregon made a holiday ale and named it after a Charles Dickens character, God bless them. And it's a REALLY GOOD ALE. The blurb on the box reads:

"There are many things from which good may be derived, yet sorry few from which greatness will appear. So it is in hope, and homage to the wonders of a changed spirit, that we offer our seasonal brew. An appropriately rich and complex Winter Warmer, Ebenezer Ale is a true celebration of the season--rich, malty, and formidable enough to alter the crankiest spirit and temper the nastiest winter chill. Cheers!"

Do you think someone in Marketing actually read A Christmas Carol in order to compose that? Yeah, me neither.

Here is a close-up of the label. Check out Scrooge's grimace. Someone needs a little hair-of-the-dog post-Ghost whisper of a sweet hangover solution.

On to sunnier matters: here's a shot of baby reading a book. We think she's so precocious. Anyone with that large a forehead is clearly already studying differential equations.

After reading, she progresses to eating the book. Because that is what 6-month-olds do. The librarians assure me that it is a book-friendly behavior.


And then shooting me the friendliest "Gotcha!" grin ever. Baby wants a Scrooge Beer.